Long summer days in Iceland's highlands

Ravaged by extreme weather and volcanic activity, the highlands of Iceland are all but barren in parts. But the region has a "desolate beauty" that has long stirred imaginations and inspired myth and folklore, said Daniel Stables in National Geographic Traveller.

Extending to more than 16,000 square miles, the uplands make up 40% of the island's landmass, and yet snowfall renders them inaccessible by road for much of the year. The time to explore them is the summer, when more than 21 hours of diurnal sunlight "cast the landscape in a soft glow". Days "feel like an endless dream", and you don't need to strike out far across the hills, on foot or in a 4WD, to leave all obvious signs of civilisation behind.

On a five-day, self-driving trip with Hidden Iceland, guests stay at the recently opened Highland Base, a minimalist, timber-clad lodge with its own thermal baths, set beneath the snowcapped, 1,477m-high peak of Kerlingarfjöll. Between two glaciers nearby lies the "unearthly" plain of Kjölur, with its huge black volcanic rocks. Here, at Beinahóll, four farmers died while travelling across Iceland in 1780. There were rumours of ghostly intervention – their bodies were found buried beneath a rock in 1845, just where a sorcerer had told their families they would be. And even now, the ground around the basalt pillar raised in their memory is still scattered with the bones of the livestock that perished with them.

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Ten miles further on, the geothermal valley of Hveradalir is like a hellish, "hostile moon", with its boiling mud pools and its steaming fumaroles. But the grassy river canyon beside it is named after Asgard, the domain of the Norse gods, and it is quite "heavenly", its hot pools cool enough for a delightful dip.

The valley of Thórsmörk ("Forest of Thor"), far to the south, is even more lush. Its green hills are scattered with wildflowers and mossy rocks, but they plunge down to a black plain across which "braided" rivers meander like "a nest of silvery snakes".

The trip costs from £1,980pp, excluding flights (hiddeniceland.is).